


Her Morning Elegance

by SorrowsFlower



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adlock, Angst, Bonding, Character Development, F/M, Fluff, Hiatus, Irenelock, Road Trip, Romance, Sherene, South of France, shirene, the adlock yacht
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 00:42:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9409943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SorrowsFlower/pseuds/SorrowsFlower
Summary: "She is pale and cold in the dim, blue light of early morning. Always so cold. Except this morning. There is an ache in his chest as he stares at her face, drinking in every detail, even though he has had every inch of her memorized since the day they met. He will have to return to London, and she will not be there."The Detective cannot need mornings with The Woman.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set Pre-Season 4. Because the lack of actual Irene Adler presence pissed me off.

Nighttime and the Woman are irrevocably entwined in his mind – the inherent darkness of her sensuality belongs in the night where she rules with both unyielding magnetism and desire wielded masterfully by her firm hand. In the exquisite violence of darkness, she whispers sin and secrets, and breaks him with her body and her mind.

But he has always known there was more to her than the Dominatrix. Oh, she will always be the queen who demands submission from all, and a challenge from him. Always the goddess who receives obedience from the less-worthy as her well-deserved right, and claims his mind as her ambrosia. But he has always known that there is more to her… more to The Woman.

It’s in the morning that he sees this.

In the mornings when he wakes with the weight of her head on his shoulder and he sees her still sleeping form beside his. Sometimes, she’ll be turned away from him, dark hair a wild tangle on the pillow, and he’ll brush just enough of the strands away to expose that delicate curve at back of her neck that always seems deceptively vulnerable. The same spot he had held the blade to in Karachi. He presses his lips thoughtfully against that spot – a marker, a prayer, an apology.

Sometimes, when she’s feeling particularly _soft_ , or when it’s cold (like that last night in Serbia before he infiltrated Baron Maupertuis’ “secure” location), she’ll curl up against him, limbs draped carelessly over his and it will be impossible to disentangle himself without waking her. There is something almost… _childlike_ about the way she tangles herself with him then. Like a child petting a beloved toy, lazy and doting, yet ready to unleash the fury of hell on anything that proposed separation.

In the mornings, she runs her fingers over the numerous scars over his body and catalogues the location, measurement and cause of each one – this from that soldier in Serbia whose wife was shagging the coffinmaker, that from the bodyguard protecting Moriarty’s hacker in Milan, the ones on his forearm from the needles each time he had to take a hit: La Paz, Amsterdam, Cordoba, New York and Rio de Janeiro. She records each anomaly in her mind, fingers brushing over the stretched tissue like a benediction, and moves on.

And of course, there are the scars she has inflicted on him. Those she lingers upon with a feral, self-satisfied smile and soothes with a pass of her clever tongue. The scars she causes rarely last long – she is a professional, after all. She knows how to inflict injury without permanent damage to the physical. As for the psychological, well, that is another story.

There are mornings when the space next to his in bed is empty, and he’ll never admit it to her, but his first reaction is always one of panic. There’s something about feeling her physical presence beside his that is not only magnetic, but is also reassuring. When she is warm and whole beside him, no matter what her mood – whether careless and languid, or hungry and demanding – he breathes an unconscious sigh of relief. 

It fills him… after the ways she breaks him in the night, in the mornings, she rebuilds him, restores him. 

He doesn’t feel this way when he’s in London and she’s God knows where. The need for physical intimacy lies there coming and going in his mind palace, and she wears it like a mantle as she drifts in and out of his many rooms. But the panic he feels with her absence loses some of its urgency. Most of the time, he’ll be reassured by a single text message inviting him to dinner, letting him know she’s alive, or a coded postcard from Florida telling him she’s in Tokyo. 

But there is something about having been in her presence that makes him crave even more. She is addictive that way, one encounter is never enough. 

And this is precisely the reason why he had to physically force himself to get up from that cot in Serbia, the reason why he returned to London. Because he needs to be the impenetrable consulting detective, and the Detective has no need for the man he is around her.

This morning, she waits for him in the car.

It’s still very early, but the stout, matronly owner of the guesthouse sees them off with a basket filled with bread, cheese, fruit and wine, and winks cheekily at him. _“Pour vous et votre femme.”_

For a moment, he thinks of correcting her, but decides against it. He accepts the basket with a forced smile and puts it in the back seat of the car. As he slides into the driver’s side, the Woman smiles sweetly at the guesthouse owner, who reminds him a little bit of a slightly more effusive Mrs. Hudson, and flutters her fingers in a casual wave. 

Little does that nice old French lady know that the lovely “American couple touring Provence” whom she had housed for the night are now driving off in a car stolen from a parking lot in Vedène with a five-million-dollar Cézanne painting in the boot.

They’ll have to switch cars again in Nice.

She is quiet this morning, but he doesn’t mind. He’s noticed lately that sometimes, she’ll allow herself to slide into a pensive mood around him, a respite from the combative nature of whatever this is between them. 

It’s no white flag, of course. Merely a subtle easing of the violin string’s tension, a reciprocation of the vulnerability he allows himself to reveal to her. It pleases him more than it should that she does this.

She tucks her legs in under her on the passenger seat and rolls the car window down. The moment the warm ocean breeze blows in through the open windows of the car, a slight change overtakes her and she commands him to pull over. 

The look on her face makes him obey. 

She is smiling and he has barely stopped the car before she takes off her shoes and opens the passenger door. She digs into the sand with her feet and starts walking out to the water.

He doesn’t like the beach. It reminds him of… things. Memories of playing pirates with a red-haired dog with wide, trusting eyes…

He shakes it off and focuses on her instead. She is at the water’s edge and the wind is blowing her hair, but her eyes are closed and she doesn’t seem to care. It’s too early for beachgoers, and beach is deserted. 

The slow sunrise paints her white and blue, and there’s a new sense of tranquility in the air around her. She opens her eyes as he approaches and he can see them shining in the dim light of the dawn.

“I love the ocean,” she confesses with a serene smile. “Don’t you?”

He looks at her clear, shining eyes and he sees the Woman, not just the dominatrix, not just the queen who once brought the nation to its knees, but all of her.

“Yes.”

He fights the urge to touch her. The Detective cannot need mornings with the Woman.

He will have to return to London again soon. After Monte Carlo. And she will be off again to wreak havoc on another country, out of his reach and his protection. 

He’s not fool enough to think she needs it, or him. She is not his to protect. The Woman does not belong to anyone, least of all to him. She neither wants nor needs his protection. 

But there is always something inside him that makes him want to hold on instinctively to her hand and never let it go.

He gives in and his fingers close over hers. She turns toward him. 

She is pale and cold in the dim, blue light of early morning. Always so cold. Except this morning. There is an ache in his chest as he stares at her face, drinking in every detail, even though he has had every inch of her memorized since the day they met. 

He will have to return to London, and she will not be there.

Still, it is morning. Her feet are bare in the sand, her hair is tangled around her shoulders from the wind, and her eyes are shining.

It is enough to see her like this, in all her morning elegance. Enough for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by that gorgeous Lara Pulver pic: http://sorrowsflower.tumblr.com/post/155766386018/her-morning-elegance-nighttime-and-the-woman-are
> 
> Originally supposed to be set in High Wycombe, but I realized that the driver's side in the picture is on the wrong side for a drive in the English countryside, so south of France it is.
> 
> Title is from an Oren Lavie song, "Her Morning Elegance".


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